Is man the measure of all things? This question has been at the forefront of philosophy ever since Protagoras proclaimed that man is the measure of all things. Sometime before he died in 420 BCE Protagoras locked horns with Socrates in a debate captured for us by Plato. It is a close reading of these works of Plato that is the subject of this book by Robert Bartlett, the Behrakis Professor of Hellenic Political Studies at Boston College.

A dramatic artistic impression of Protagoras, by the 17th century painter Jusepe de Ribera, graces the cover of this exploration of Plato's two texts, the Protagoras and the Theaetetus. Despite his own vast learning and study, Bartlett admits more than once that the meaning embedded in Plato's works is far from transparent. For example, on pg. 78, he writes “It is difficult to know what to make of these challenging exchanges.”

He is referring to a discussion between Protagoras and Socrates on the subject of wisdom, courage and boldness. It occurs in Plato's text Protagoras. Socrates attempts to show it is the wisest who are boldest, and, being boldest, most courageous. So, Socrates concludes, “according to this argument, the wisdom [in question] would be courage.”

Bartlett's comment on this point of the argument is illuminating. “Showing much boldness or at least confidence himself, Protagoras calmly declines to be force-fed this highly compressed argument: Socrates' recollection isn't a noble one.” As the argument progresses, Protagoras insists that “courage and wisdom are not the same thing.” Bartlett poses a pregnant question: “Is it really possible for Protagoras still to maintain that one can be both 'very courageous' and 'very ignorant'?”

During the argument Protagoras charges Socrates with committing a logical fallacy, one that Socrates never rebuts. Discerning meaning in what did not happen (a rebuttal) is the author's gift to the reader. He opens our eyes to what this means. Socrates' “silence has the effect of bolstering Protagoras' confidence or boldness: we see before our eyes the marriage of boldness and (what is taken to be) wisdom issuing in the courage to stand one's ground or to fight back, at least in argument.”

Bartlett is equally insightful in his analysis of the Theaetetus. Protagoras states “For the sort of things that seem to each city to be just and noble, these things are in fact for it, for so long as it recognizes them.” Bartlett regards this “as frank a statement as one could wish for of the 'moral relativism' of Protagoras”, who goes on in Plato's text to draw a distinction between the point of view of “the wise” and that of “the cities.” The wise are extramoral or amoral, while cities exhibit morality through-and-through.

“The existence of this chasm,” writes Bartlett, “must be an important part of the 'education' for which the capable sophist is responsible.” As the first man to declare himself to be a sophist, “Protagoras thus defends the idea of wisdom in general and his own superior wisdom in particular.” Whether or not Socrates really defeats Protagoras at his own game is a question I will leave to the studious reader of this entrancing book. But Bartlett, in conclusion, contends that “Socrates did not succumb to the chaos-inducing motion that can go together with the thought that a human being is the measure” of all things.

This books is, as the author states, about “the battle between political philosophy and sophistry at its peak.” With extraordinary erudition, Bartlett has made this a crucial text in both disciplines.

Sophistry and Political Philosophy: Protagoras' Challenge to Socrates (248 pages) is $40 by University of Chicago Press.

Even now Sicilians have a strong streak of independence from Italy, but in the 18th century it was a barely governable portion of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily. Both realms had the same king, but he resided in Naples, leaving the nearly impossible job of running Sicily to a Viceroy. This book is about one of those viceroys, Domenico Caracciolo.

The author of this intriguing biography, Angus Campbell, sadly died in 2015 at age 76, but his intimate knowledge of the Sicilian experience lives on in these pages. He married a Sicilian and lived in western Sicily for the last 15 years of his life. The subject of his book was born in Spain exactly 300 years before Campbell died, and lived nearly as long as Campbell: 74 years.

Campbell quotes an author from 1785 as writing “The Sicilians are looked on as foreigners in Naples; at Court as enemies.” The Court referred to is the royal court of King Ferdinand and his politically savvy wife Maria Carolina, who was to prove a great influence in the life of Caracciolo.

The title of the book gives one the expectation of learning how Sicily advanced as the result of Enlightenment ideals, but it is actually a depiction of how entrenched baronial influence made sure most of Caracciolo's reforming zeal was consigned to the graveyard. Essential to change was the full backing of Ferdinand, but he had little interest in politics and rarely offered such support.

Campbell tells us the Viceroy from 1755 to 1774 “was much loved by the barons because he elected not to interfere with them.” They likewise hated Caracciolo, who reluctantly took over in 1781, “more than a year after his initial appointment.” He lingered as long as he could in his beloved Paris, where he performed diplomatic duties for the kingdom. The first half of the book details his early life and career in both Paris and London, where he visited silk warehouses with a view to reforming the Sicilian silk manufacturing business. His sensible proposals were blocked by vested interests, just what he encountered 17 years later when he became Viceroy.

His greatest legacy turned out to be scientific. “Caracciolo had Giuseppe Piazzi put in charge of the observatory” which was funded by money that came into the government coffers when Caracciolo disbanded the hated Inquisition of the Catholic Church. The author provides no dates or details on this important development, but it was in 1786 that Piazzi was appointed to the chair of Astronomy and charged with the project of setting up an Observatory. The Viceroy did not live to see the astronomical observatory, as he died three years later in his new position as Prime Minister to the King, the most senior government post that Queen Maria Carolina arranged for him to get. Piazzi achieved fame in 1801 by discovering Ceres, the first known asteroid, from the observatory in Palermo.

Campbell has given us a wonderfully detailed account of the political and personal machinations of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily. This serves as an excellent counterpoint to the well-known memoirs of Lord Acton, a close confidant to Queen Maria Carolina, and a man Caracciolo dealt with as both friend and foe for many years.

Sicily and the Enlightenment: The World of Domenico Caracciolo, Thinker and Reformer. Published by I.B. Tauris (London), $35.

The subtitle of this award-winning book is a bit misleading, as author Meghan J. DiLuzio does cover the role of priestesses in both the Republican and Imperial Roman periods, although the emphasis is certainly on the former. DiLuzio is assistant professor of Classics at Baylor University in Texas.

Earlier this year I met Dr. DiLuzio at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS), where I asked about what led her to research this book. Here she mentions Dr. Mary Beard of the University of Cambridge.

“I decided to write about priestesses in Rome because I had read Mary Beard's article about Vestal virgins where she talked about how the Vestals must have had a masculine aura that surrounded them because they were the only priestesses in Rome. To sacrifice you had to have this official public status.

“That seemed odd to me because we do have evidence for other public priestesses like the flamen Dialis, the flamen of Mars, priestesses of the Quirnalis and of Ceres: so there are other priestesses but they weren't getting a lot of attention in the major scholarly works on priesthood or on women in religion.

“John Scheid's article on women in Roman religion asserts very definitively there are no priestesses other than the Vestals although he does acknowledge these other women are performing official roles but there is a sort of problem of categorizing them. I wanted to address what I thought was the issue of the way we are talking about women and their official role in public cults, and present all of the evidence to show they did have a very full role in public cults but one that was conditioned by their gender and Roman ideologies of gender.” DiLuzio said “how this impacted the kind of cults they were involved in and the kind of relationships they had to other public priests” was central to her project, which I must say is a great success.

The author convincingly demonstrates how pervasive the role of women was in a wide variety of ceremonial rites in ancient Rome. Sometimes this was in conjunction with a man, as a priest of a major cult was quite literally married to the priestess of the cult. If she died, the priest had to withdraw from his role, to replaced by another married couple. Foremost among these was the flamen Dialis, and his wife the flaminica Dialis, representing the priesthood of Jupiter, the foremost god. Their requirement to perform daily sacrifices meant they were never allowed to leave the city walls of Rome.

On page 144 she deals head-on with the model advanced by Beard that Vestal Virgins possessed a certain “sexual ambiguity” that made them sacred figures. This thesis, writes DiLuzio, “is untenable.” She looks at a particular leader of the Vestals, Cornelia, “who was convicted of incestum and buried alive” by the emperor Domitian. According to Livy, she defended herself thus: “does Caesar think that I have been unchaste, when he has conquered and triumphed while I have been performing the rites?” This plea, says DiLuzio, “hinges on the relationship between her virginity and efficacy of the sacra (religious rites) in her care. If she has performed the sacra unchastely, Domitian's campaigns would have been doomed to failure.”

The plea, which did not dissuade the tyrant, shows not only the link between Rome's own inviolability, but that of the Vestal Virgin. This also highlights the vast difference between what we regard as religion today, and what it meant to those in ancient Rome.

An examination of the Vestals occupies much of the book as it was the premiere cult that has survived the best in our sources, but the author gives full attention to several other cults. She describes the Salian Virgins as both enigmatic and the most intriguing of the ones under discussion. Unlike Vestals, Salian priestesses “only remained in office as long as they were virgins,” so they resigned upon marriage. Most were thus teenagers, who danced through the city to the Forum at the beginning of the military campaign season. Thus she disputes the opinion of some scholars that the Salian dance was not a martial ritual but merely an initiation rite into adulthood.

The book offers several illustrations showing how the Vestals dressed, and DiLuzio goes into great details about such things as their hairstyle, shoes, and jewelry (or lack of it). Their public role is also given its due in this book, showing how they could and did intervene in public affairs. The most notable of these is the decision by Sulla to kill the young Julius Caesar. Fortunately Caesar had already been named flamen Dialis, and a personal intervention to Sulla by the leader of the Vestal Virgins saved his life, and thus changed history.

A fascinating book that shows how, despite centuries of scholarly study, we still labour under serious misapprehensions about ancient Roman life and culture.

For A Place at the Altar: Priestesses in Republican Rome, CAMWS awarded its “First Book Award” to DiLuzio in 2017.

This book is billed as the "first in-depth study of the attitude of Greek military commanders towards holy ground." Author Dr. Sonya Nevin at the University of Roehampton (London) has identified an important and intiguing element of ancient warfare that certainly deserves such a book-length treatment.

Nevin packs a lot of detail in 200 pages (the remaining 100 pages consists of notes, bibliography and index). Early on she looks at the Persian destruction of Athens in 480 BCE. "As a show of power in their most sacred space, the focal point of their territory, the destruction challenged the Athenian communal identity." The bulk of her attention, however, focuses on how Greeks dealt with temples of other Greeks in their nearly constant warfare against one another. Here I will explore just two of the case studies she considers.

"The most significant encounter with sacred space concerned the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus outside Syracuse," a city I visited in July 2017. The Athenian general Nicias, victorious over the forces of Syracuse, chose not to plunder the sanctuary. Nevin writes that the Greek historian Thucydides "is characteristically enigmatic" about this. Nevin suggests "Thucydides is perhaps asking his readers to consider a difficult question: if a state (or a person) has undertaken to do something unjust (ie the invasion of Sicily), to what extent should they continue to commit injustices in order to see that goal through? ...Strategically, Nicias made a mistake; morally he made the right decision. Thucydides confronts us with the hard choice of what to make of that."

When the Olympic Games were held in 420 BCE, the atmosphere between competing Greek states "had got so bad that the Eleans had more than 2,000 troops ready to defend the sanctuary. The awkwardness this time was not Athens' treatment of its allies, but Sparta's fall-out with Elis," which controlled the area in which the Games were held. Sparta was banned from the Olympics, but Sparta chose not to march their army there, thus averting a crisis. It was, declares Nevin, "a sacrilege too far for a pious people with a reputation to think about."

Likely just a year later, in 419, the sanctuary of Zeus associated with the Nemean Games (held in years the Olympics did not take place) was destroyed. Nevin tells us this only became know to modern scholars through archeaological evidence, as "no Greek tells us what happened...This is a reminder of how selective Thucydides and other ancient historians were about what events they covered. Nonetheless, this seems an extreme example given the intensity of the destruction of a site of Panhellic renown." Why such "blatant sacrilege" was passed over in silence is, Nevin laments, "fundamentally unclear."

Overall, an excellent study of an all-too-often neglected aspect of ancient hostilities. It is unfortunate the book lacks illustrations and maps to help those who are not Greek historians understand the events more fully. Written in an easy manner without the usual heavy adornments of scholarly prose, Nevin has filled an important niche in our understanding of ancient Greek thought and culture.

Military Leaders and Sacred Space in Classical Greek Warfare (307 pages) is $99 from I.B.Tauris.

Dr. James May just retired from a long and distinguished career at St Olaf College in Minnesota. I recently had the privilege of hearing his final Latin oration at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of the MidWest and South, which was held in Kitchener, Ontario.

The 18 essays in this tribute volume cover a vast array of topics from the most technical to pop culture. For example, one deals with the role of satire in refuting Christian heretics in the Byzantine period; while another surveys movies and TV shows that include Cicero as a character. We learn he was in 15 of the 22 episodes of the HBO series Rome, and the chapter even gives us his dialogue!

Closer to what one might look for in a classical book is a close reading of Lucan's depiction of Caesar as a lightning bolt personified, and his battle as said bolt against nature. Sarah Nix does a fine job at portraying the fearsome nature of Caesar's power over nature, especially in his deliberate destruction of a sacred grove to get timber he needed to beseige a town. "Caesar not only approaches the wood but begins to cut it down, demonstrating that he is not only a physical force but a cosmic force as well, able to defy the gods of the grove."

With the concept of truth a daily topic of discussion on cable TV news, the first chapter (by Hilary Bouxsein) shows the eternal relevance of how truth is perceived. She looks at the second half of Homer's Odyssey. While she draws no parallels with current political discourse in the U.S., I believe a close study of her discussion on the rhetoric of honesty will help us understand what is happening now. We learn, for example, how a character can "highlight his supposed honesty" that in reality is "not exactly a claim of truth." The character she looks at, Telemachus, merely "asserts that he is generally fond of speaking the truth." Remind you of anyone?

There are several outstanding chapters, including one (by Jennifer Starkey) on the "man-killing axe" called for by Clytemnestra in the play Libation Bearers by Aeschylus; and an essay by Ann Vasaly on Livy and the benefits of political discord. It is couched in terms of a discussion on Machiavelli's discourse on Livy. "Was Machiavelli right?" asks Vasaly. "Does Livy's history show that disunion made the Roman Republic free and powerful?" She concludes the observations of Machiavelli "are borne out" but qualifies it by highlighting aspects of Livy's presentation that Machaivelli "passes over in silence." A well reasoned and fascinating chapter.

Authors sometimes touch on an element of an argument without exploring it fully. For example, in a discussion of the gods by the 4th century CE writer Isocrates, Terry Papillon quotes him as writing "It is said that even the gods are ruled by Zeus. If the report is true about this, it is clear that they too prefer this government." As both sentences are couched in conditional terms, this is in fact a very weak argument by Isocrates for the promotion of monarchy, but the author does not explore its meaning or implications. Was Isocrates actually saying the opposite of what he appears to be promoting?

Five essays in the book focus on May's classical model: Cicero. What I would like to have seen in the book is an example of May's own writing on Cicero. His bibliography is given, with many Cicero-related papers listed. The inclusion of just one would have been marvellous, especially for those who are not conversant with his body of work.

The Ciceronian chapters address such topics as Cicero's developing ideas of apotheosis (he presents himself as wise and godlike); the dating of the quaestorship of Crassus based in part on the writing of Cicero; and the social propriety of Cicero writing letters during dinner time with friends (One can relate this to texting on the phone in a restaurant in 2017). The book resembles such a Roman banquet with delicacies that may tempt some but be turned down with thanks by others. Enjoy the feast.

Ab omni parte beatus (Blessed from every perspective) is $49 from the publisher Bolchazy-Carducci in Illinois.